Este, he wished to reconcile him
with the Duke of Ferrara; and Tasso, who to the last moment of his life
seems never to have been able to resist the chance of resuming old
quarters, apparently from the double temptation of renouncing them, wrote
his old master a letter full of respects and regrets. But the duke, who
himself died in the course of the year, was not to be moved from his
silence. The poet had given him the last possible offence by recasting
his _Jerusalem_, omitting the glories of the house of Este, and
dedicating it to another patron. Alfonso, who had been extravagantly
magnificent, though not to poets, had so weakened his government, that
the Pope wrested Ferrara from the hands of his successor, and reduced
the Este family to the possession of Modena, which it still holds and
dishonours. The duke and the poet were thus fading away at the same time;
they never met again in this world; and a new Dante would have divided
them far enough in the next.[31]

The last glimpse of honour and glory was now opening in a very grand
manner on the poet--the last and the greatest, as if on purpose to give
the climax to his disappointments. Cardinal Cintio requested the Pope to
give him the honour of a coronation. It had been desired by the poet, it
seems, three years before. He was disappointed of it at that time; and
now that it was granted, he was disappointed of the ceremony. Manso says
he no longer cared for it; and, as he felt himself dying, this is not
improbable. Nevertheless he went to Rome for the purpose; and though the
severity of the winter there delayed the intention till spring, wealth
and honours seemed determined to come in floods upon the poor expiring
great man, in order to take away the breath which they had refused to
support. The Pope assigned him a yearly pension of a hundred scudi; and
the withholders of his mother's dowry came to an accommodation by which
he was to have an annuity of a hundred ducats, and a considerable sum
in hand. His hand was losing strength enough to close upon the money.
Scarcely was the day for the coronation about to dawn, when the poet felt
his dissolution approaching. Alfonso's doctors had killed him at last by
superinducing a habit of medicine-taking, which defeated its purpose.
He requested leave to return to the monastery of St. Onofrio--wrote a
farewell letter to Constantini--received the distinguished honour of a
plenary indulgence from the Pope--said (in terms very l